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Arab League urges political solution to Yemeni crisis as cease-fire declared

Xinhua, November 17, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Arab League on Wednesday urged a political solution to the Yemeni crisis and welcomed a U.S.-brokered truce between Yemen's Shiite Houthi group and the Saudi-led Arab military coalition, said a senior official with the pan-Arab body.

"The Arab League welcomes the announcement of a cease-fire in Yemen and the work on pushing dialogue between Yemeni parties to reach a political solution to the ongoing crisis in order to preserve Yemen as well as people, land and entity," its Deputy Secretary-General Ahmed Ben Helli told reporters in Cairo.

He added that the Arab League is in contact with the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, and the legitimate Yemeni government in a bid to reach a political settlement in the war-torn country.

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, during his recent Gulf tour, said that the Houthi group and the Saudi-led coalition had agreed to a ceasefire starting Thursday.

However, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi said that Kerry's announcement was not coordinated with the Yemeni government that was "not interested" in Kerry's plan, describing the U.S. bid as "a media bubble."

The situation in Yemen has been worsening since March 2015, when a war broke out between the Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the legitimate government of fleeing President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi backed by the Saudi-led coalition.

The Houthis and Saleh's forces control most of Yemen's northern regions while the government forces control the rest of the conflict-stricken country.

The Arab military coalition has been launching deadly airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, but a lot of civilians have been "wrongly targeted" during the operations.

The civil war, ground battles and airstrikes have so far killed over 10,000 people, half of them civilians, injured over 35,000 others and displaced over 2 million, according to humanitarian agencies. Endit